


What's Got you Buried Beneath the Dirt?

by musicalgirl4474



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Buried Alive, Christian religion being written by a Druid, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Sam Winchester, Other hunters hurt Sam, POV Outsider, Please excuse any mistakes, Suicidal Sam Winchester, Temporary Character Death, Unreliable Narrator, briefly, sorta - Freeform, vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29517813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicalgirl4474/pseuds/musicalgirl4474
Summary: Day 9: Buried Alive"Being buried alive is deceptively terrifying. There’s lots of choices to make; breath while they slowly shovel the soil onto you? Or hold your breath and press your face into the bottom of the grave and suffocate yourself that much quicker? Draw out the terror or actively try to die? There was altogether too much thinking involved in this kind of death."Some hunters catch Sam and bury him alive.
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140197
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	What's Got you Buried Beneath the Dirt?

**Author's Note:**

> OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF this one took time and emotion, I'm worried that the ending isn't great.

Sam both hates and accepts what is happening. He hates the panic thrumming through his body, hates that this thing of flesh and blood wants to keep living, hates his heart beating a pulse against the chains wrapped around him. (The metal bites into his naked skin; they hadn’t cared to clothe the monster after their blades tore his clothes to shreds.) He accepts that these hunters found out about him, found him, took him. He had been alone. Lucifer’s vessel running from Michael’s. (Running so as not to hurt. Not now, not ever.) Accepts that they won’t grant him a merciful death. The torture of slowly suffocating is probably less than he deserves. 

He can feel blood collecting in the shallow grave under where he’s laying, gashes and scrapes burning uncomfortably against cold soil. He wonders vaguely if Dean will find him before Lucifer does. (He knows he won’t stay dead; he’d put a bullet in his mouth just a few hours after Lucifer first came to him. Hadn’t even been dead an hour when his vision righted enough to read the bedside clock. He’d had a killer headache for days though. Punishment?)

The hunters had come into his motel room, and he hadn’t bothered fighting. There was no point really, and if these men could _end_ Lucifer’s vessel, take the piece of the board, then who was he to say no? (Apparently that hadn’t been satisfying enough. What kind of monster didn’t fight hunters? So they’d turned him into a pin-cushion before dumping him in the bed of a truck and driving out here.)

There is very real fear behind the panic, the fear that he won’t be able to take this with some kind of dignity. He can at least accept his death quietly, right? It’s not even as if it will be permanent. But being buried alive is deceptively terrifying. There’s lots of choices to make; breath while they slowly shovel the soil onto you? Or hold your breath and press your face into the bottom of the grave and suffocate yourself that much quicker? Draw out the terror or actively try to die? There was altogether too much thinking involved in this kind of death. And it was _slow_.

Against his judgement, he opens his eyes. There are faces peering down at him, most of them of rough, haggard men. “Please,” he rasps, voice harsh in his throat from involuntary noises while they had hurt him earlier. “At least make it quick?” One of the faces above him blanches, but the shovelfuls of dirt don’t come any faster. “ _Please!_ ” Monsters didn’t have any pride to keep. The next shovelful landed on his face, and he instinctively shook his head to clear the grains away. He’s still fucking _breathing_. How slow did this need to go? Not long, apparently. It’s an odd feeling, suffocating while feeling cold air against naked skin. Muscles pulling against chains while his chest, which could feel the air, struggled under collapsing lungs as dirt was piled higher above his face.

He blacks out at some point, and is glad that he at least gets to wait for Death in relative comfort. It’s not that long before he’s alive again though, the cold feeling of Lucifer’s grace a foreign influence in his own body. There’s real _weight_ against him now, the grave filled in, soil and rock and who-knew-what-else above him, pressing down. No air. The chains kept him from moving, from digging, even as the desperation in his chest rose and crested and fell into despair. Was he just going to keep dying and being resurrected? No, no no no nonononono _no_.

_Just say yes, Sam._

_Well. No to that too, by the way. Bigger no. The biggest no._

_Enjoy insanity then, vessel-mine._

Insanity. Yes, that was probably what would happen as he kept dying over and over and over again. Sam wondered if brain damage would make the vessel uninhabitable for Lucifer. Lack of oxygen caused brain damage. His thoughts spun briefly, went an odd yellow color as he sucked in for air that wasn’t there, and then darkness again.

Father Jacobs wasn’t quite a hunter, but he knew about the Supernatural. Knew to pass on odd happenings to Bobby Singer and that the other man would send someone to take care of it. Sometimes, Bobby would send a hunter his way for something else though. Sometimes, those people needed to get something off their chests. They needed absolution, and Father Jacobs was happy to provide those brave souls what balm he could.

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned.”

“I am here for you, child.”

“I don’t think he was a monster,” the voice choked out, over-wrought as all of these hunters tended to be when they broke down and called him. “I remember him from when he was just a kid- been in this Life from a younger age than any other hunter, surely that messed him up. I don’t think he was really a monster.”

There is silence for a moment. “If his brother kills me for this, I will have deserved it.” A shaky, drawn-out breath. “Father, what I have done is not a sin I feel can be forgiven without some form of true repentance.”

“All sins can be forgiven, my child.”

“My heart will not let myself be forgiven for this unless I do something,” the voice insisted. “I need this message to get to Dean Winchester, Singer should know where he is.”

“Why do you not deliver the message yourself, my child?”

“I repent,” the voice said, “but I am not suicidal. I won’t give Winchester any ability to track this to me.”

So Father Jacobs takes down the town name and GPS coordinates. Sends them to one Dean Winchester via Bobby Singer, and washes his hands of it, mostly. It is not his to judge, only to offer absolution. 

The dream he has that night, tinged with something that must be holy, wings and grace and some kind of metaphysical _love-anguish-please-save-him_ , sends him to the church’s second-hand car. A quick trip, to see what had happened. He has been compelled. 

Bobby Singer tells him that Dean Winchester works alone, but gives him the name of the motel he’s staying at nevertheless. Because Father Jacobs isn’t a hunter, just a spiritual advisor. Singer also warns him that Dean isn’t religious, that he’s likely to speak profanity and be belligerent about Father Jacobs’ beliefs. But Father Jacobs is there on a mission from . . . well, _above_ , he thinks, so he decides that he won’t mind.

Dean Winchester is not a small man, and his personality is even larger than his body. He opens the door and scowls at Father Jacobs, but motions him inside. “Bobby said I’d have a hanger-on,” he says. Father Jacobs closes the door behind him, looks at the two beds in the room; only the one nearest the door appears to have been used. Dean must notice because he snorts.

“Got two beds out of habit,” he says. “Usually hunt with my brother.”

“Where is your brother now?”

There’s a darkness -anger and sadness- that flashes across Dean’s face, flattens away any expression. “Don’t know, don’t care.” Except that it’s obvious he does care. Father Jacobs accepts the words at face value however. Dean Winchester is not what he’s here for. He thinks.

“What are the coordinates to?” he asks. The hunter shrugs.

“Haven’t even been here an hour. Was planning to go out after getting something to eat.”

“The person who called me with those coordinates seemed rather desperate,” Father Jacobs says, though he too would like some food. It just seems like the right thing to say at the moment.

“Lots of people get worked up over nothing,” the other man scoffed. “I need some food before going off on a wild goose-chase.”

It doesn’t take long for Father Jacobs to begin to re-analyze his thought that he hadn’t been sent here for Dean Winchester. The man is an amalgamation of contradictions. He eats greasy diner food, but his frame is that of a man who takes care of his body. He tosses his duffel carelessly, but cleans his guns with care. (He acts as if he doesn’t care about his brother, but his eyes are sad when Father Jacobs brings him up.)

The GPS coordinates are near a river, not far from a children’s playground. Out-of-sight, but still when they come across what looks like a fresh grave, Father Jacobs finds the location absolutely too macabre. Why had the hunter who called them buried a monster so close to children? (But the man had said that whatever he had done, he had done to something he no longer thought was a monster.)

Dean offers him a shovel, and Father Jacobs accepts. If he was going to be here, he might as well help the man with menial labor. Digging up whatever poor soul had been killed. Dean gets further into the ground quicker than Father Jacobs does; he wonders if there is a technique to grave-digging that hunters have to master.

The shovel is starting to hurt, handle rough against his hands, when Dean makes a sound as if he’s been hurt. Father Jacobs looks up, worried, from his own hole, and watches the other man collapse to his knees. “God no,” he moans, as if his whole world has been destroyed. And then he is digging like a man possessed, clawing at the loose dirt with bare hands to uncover more of the body. The first thing Father Jacobs sees is the shoes; old brown boots, not unlike the pair that Dean is wearing. The next is the shine of metal; chains wrapped around ankles. All the while, Dean is chanting the word “no,” over and over as if that will change anything. Father Jacobs has a sinking feeling. He keeps shoveling dirt away from the grave, moving heavy loads with hands not used to the shovel.

The young man’s face, when it’s revealed, is twisted, as if in pain, his open eyes bloodshot. He must have suffocated. Buried alive. These thoughts are only quiet murmurs in the back of his head. The whole world seems to ring with Dean Winchester’s grief as he pulls the body (the corpse) into his arms, brushing away the rest of the dirt tenderly even as his own body shakes with sobs. 

Father Jacobs steps back, lets Dean grieve. (That body had housed the soul that had been Sam Winchester. The brother he claimed not to care about but so obviously did.) He gives Dean privacy in the four-foot-deep grave his brother had been buried alive in. (Killed by other hunters; why had they gone after him? What kind of monster did they think he was?)

There’s silence after only a few minutes, and then the faint sound of metal-on-metal. When Dean hoists the body out of the grave, the chains are gone; bloody wrists and a bruised throat the only reminders of their presence. Father Jacobs watches, and wonders. _Why did you want me here_? He calls mentally up to the heavens, because this is heart-breaking. This is hard and confusing and he has no idea what’s going on, but he knows it’s _wrong_.

“Cas,” Dean says, and Father Jacobs looks back down, but no one else is there. “Cas please.”

There’s an interesting sound, a kind of a _whoosh_ of air displacement, and suddenly there _is_ someone else. He’s a shock of dark hair against a pale face, and for some reason, is wearing a trench-coat in Wisconsin August (it has to be at least 85 degrees). And he came from nowhere.

“What has happened?” His voice was deeper than Father Jacobs had been expecting.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Dean Winchester said. “ _Please_ Cas! Do something!”

The man crouched next to the body, laid a hand on the bruised neck. A light came from him, bright blue like winter skies, washed-out but bright. “I can clear the obstruction from his airways,” he said ( _what was happening?_ ) “but the rest is not up to me.”

Dean nodded, and the blue light faded from the stranger’s hand. Then Dean was digging a finger into the pulse-point of the corpse’s neck ( _He’s dead_ Father Jacobs wants to say, but there’s a tingle of power in the back of his mind, and for some reason he lets it keep him quiet.)

Then the corpse _breathes_ , a great, heaving, coughing gasp. Dean Winchester bows over the form, mouthing words that Father Jacobs cannot hear, but might be fevered thanks. To God, he assumes. Who else could bring a corpse back to life.

Still: “What just happened?” he asks. Because really, he’s seen and heard many things in his forty-three years, but this strained credulity.

Dean Winchester gets to his feet then, leaving the now-living body prone on the ground. “Father Jacobs,” he says, “meet Castiel, Angel of the Lord. Cas, this is Father Jacobs. He was the one who called Bobby with these coordinates and no other information.”

The man ( _Angel?_ ) looks at him, _through_ him, blue eyes piercing, and for a moment, Father Jacobs thinks he sees the shadows of great wings stretched on the ground behind him. Castiel takes a step forward, and it’s so obviously threatening that, if he were a lesser man, Father Jacobs is sure he would have backed up a step or two. As it is, he’s rather trapped on this spot by awe. “Were you a part of this?” the voice hisses, and he is quick to shake his head.

“I simply took confession from one who was and felt great guilt about it,” he says, fighting the urge to get on his knees and beg forgiveness for an act he did not commit. Blue eyes stare through him again before the angel (!!??) nods and looks back towards Dean Winchester.

“If you don’t mind,” Father Jacobs says slowly, nodding towards the prone form “what . . . how did he come back? Was it God?”

“My Father has been absent for millenia,” was the response, and Father Jacobs thinks his heart stops beating for a moment. Then he chokes as Castiel, Angel of Thursday, continues with: “Lucifer will not allow his true vessel to die and stay dead-”

“Whoa Cas,” Dean interrupts, “let’s not make the Father want to murder Sam too.” He turns to regard Father Jacobs with wariness in his eyes. “Sam didn’t have a choice, but he’s not gonna let Lucifer use him,” he said. “And you can tell all your buddies that, along with the fact that I will _hunt down_ anyone who hurts my brother.”

“Dean-” a rasping voice from the body.

“Hey there Sammy, you’re alright,” Dean said, crouching down again. Castiel was still staring unnervingly at Father Jacobs. He moved closer.

“Go home and spread the word,” the Angel says. “Sam Winchester is not for your kind to hurt.”

Father Jacobs has a crazy urge to ask if it will be Angels and demons who hurt the boy, but holds his tongue and nods. He has no urge to enmesh himself in this mess any further. He can spread the word Heaven has asked him to. What else is his life for?


End file.
